Prime Video’s 4-Part Action Show Is So Good, You Can Start From Any Season

Although Prime Video has a lot of great action thriller shows, one of the streaming service’s best offerings in the genre conveniently utilizes an anthology approach to its seasons. As great as the five-season run of Prime Video’s The Boys is, the superhero satire is not a show that viewers can start from any episode. The Boys is best viewed from the pilot straight through to the series finale, and viewers who want to get the most out of the show should really also check out its spinoffs, Diabolical and Gen V.

While this is appealing to fans, it can be intimidating for newcomers. This is part of what makes Prime Video’s hit action thriller Reacher such a hit, since every season of the Lee Child adaptation functions as a standalone story that new viewers can start without any prior knowledge. Since Alan Ritchson’s hulking title character is a drifter who moves from city to city uprooting criminal conspiracies, every season of Reacher tells a new story that is largely unconnected to its predecessors.

However, Reacher isn’t the first Prime Video action thriller to take this approach. Some four years before the show began, another adaptation of a legendary thriller author’s most famous novel series used the same anthology format to make spy thrillers less intimidating to new viewers. Beginning in 2018, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan saw Prime Video update the author’s classic novels about an everyman CIA agent.

Every Season of Prime Video’s Jack Ryan Works As A Standalone Story

Previously played by Harrison Ford in the hit ‘90s movies Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games, Jack Ryan returned to the big screen in 2014’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, where he was played by Chris Pine. However, it was Prime Video’s Jack Ryan series that became the most enduringly popular deception of the character, a veteran who is pushed from desk work as a financial analyst into working as a field agent.

The Office star John Krasinski might seem like an unlikely star for a spy thriller, but like Chris Pratt in Prime Video’s The Terminal List adaptation, the star quickly acquitted himself in the role. Since spy movies and shows are infamously plot-heavy and filled with double-crosses, deceit, and frame-ups, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan made the savvy decision to reset its storyline with each new season. This welcomed in new viewers, as well as offering a change of scenery for longtime fans.

Each season works as its own thing, despite the connections between them, and even 2026’s spinoff movie Ghost War works as a standalone story. Season 1 focuses on Jack taking on a rising extremist terrorist sect, while season 2 sends him to Venezuela. Season 3’s setting uprooted the agent again, dropping him in the Czech Republic, while the finale season centered on a domestic drug smuggling ring.

Jack Ryan’s Setup Influenced Later Prime Video’s Later Hit Action Shows

This ingenious ploy meant that, even though spy thrillers are traditionally knotty, complex, and byzantine in their paranoid plotting, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan remained accessible throughout its five-year run. Thus, it should come as no surprise that every new season of Reacher takes the same approach, albeit on a smaller scale. In that hit series, Child’s antihero never stays long in the same city, although, unlike Jack Ryan, he rarely ventures outside the US.

Similarly, Prime Video’s Cross, an adaptation of the long-running James Patterson novel series of the same name, takes a similar approach. Although that critical hit is more of a police procedural, the show’s decision to ensure that each season works as a standalone story clearly owes a debt to the savvy plotting of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, the first Prime Video show to benefit from this approach.

Release Date

2018 – 2023-00-00

Network

Prime Video

Showrunner

Carlton Cuse

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